Monday, June 22, 2015

But this time, my oh-god-it's-not even six-thirty-no-coffee response hit pay-dirt..

Eventually.

The interrogation started like this:"Mummy, what is your favourite food in the whole world?"
No brainer: 'Lobster."'What's your second favourite food?'
Fortunately for my caffeine deprived state, another no brainer;'Your grand-mère's Pastillia''What's THAT!?
I'm on auto pilot - my stomach is doing the talking;'Its a traditional Moroccan pigeon pie except grand-mère makes it with chicken - it's delicious and amazing.'
She shrugs.''Ok. What's your third favourite food?'
My stomach riffs on the theme, thinking of Bordeaux and the other lovely food we enjoy at my mother-in-law's table. Dropping a capsule in the Nespresso machine I say, 'Saucisson.''What's your fourth favourite food?'
My stomach still dreaming of Bordeaux takes another pass from my brain;'pâté'
I'm beginning to wonder how long thisline of questioning can possibly go on, but my brain leans in towards the coffee aroma in anticipation.
But by the time I take my first grateful sip of coffee, she's wandered over to her homework book on the dining table and is distracted by some math equations.'Mummy How do you spell multipleoccasions'
Caffeine now skipping gaily through my scull is shouting time to get up everybody and jabbing it's delicious fingers at my synapses.'Do you mean multiplication?'
She looks at me, slaps the top of her head and giggling, pulls a face.

Random questions. Lots of them. All of the time

The most enjoyable and entertaining questions are the random ones. They can take off in the oddest directions often winding up on another map entirely. One minute you're noticing a table someone's thrown out onto the curb and within moment's you've covered topics like recycling, poverty and social services, even the government's stance on deforestation and it's impact on the environment.
We got into another discussion on the latter when I asked her not to use sooo much toilet paper (we also touched on plumbing with that too). She told me that she wanted to be an environmentalist when she grew up after that. Not a plumber - no way! I think there's more money in plumbing, but not having bills or credit card statements she can afford to be totally altruistic.

Mummy, how do you spell ---?

Now that she wants to be an author, she wears my nerves thread-bare with 'how do you spell--?' questions.
She'll be writing another book and the how-do-you-spells will go on and on, through cooking dinner, while I'm vacuuming, feeding the pets, hanging the washing on the line. She's relentless - she'll keep it up for hours.

Well I hope she does become an author, rather than a vet, or an environmentalist, or a zoologist, a director, a superhero or a pop-star because I intend relating these stories to the media at her first big book launch.

But this weekend I hit pay-dirt indeed with her favourite food cross-examination: she railroaded her father into taking her to the Sunday fishmarket!
for Sunday lunch we had fresh lobster, prawns, muscles...they even found saussison and pâté!